When do the clocks go forward in 2016?

Matt Reeder

It’s almost time to put the clocks forward and for British Summer Time to officially begin.

This year British Summer Time begins on Easter Sunday, March 27, when the official time to move your timepiece forward by an hour is at 1am.

While you will lose an hour of the longest bank holiday weekend of the year, on the upside there will be an extra hour of daylight in the evening.

Mobile phones and other devices with an internet connection should automatically change, but it is always worth double checking.

If you take a look at your time and date settings, there should be an automatic setting for daylight saving.

British Summer Time was first introduced 98 years ago to help the war effort during the summer months during the First World War. It meant agricultural work, with fewer and less experienced workers around after many farmhands joined the armed services, could go on later into the evening.

Between 1968 and 1971, the clocks were changed to BST permanently as an experiment but after complaints that it made Scotland too dark in the mornings, the Government reverted to using BST between March and October.